Clean Slates
by youaretoosmart
Summary: "You said you had a way to find out which one of us is the best detective. So. I'm listening; what did that great, genius brain of yours come up with?" "A bet," she says curtly. "A bet?" / B99 AU, in which Stiles and Lydia have a bet going on to see who can get the more arrests.


**Prompt: _A brooklyn 99 style AU where Stiles is an unconventional, rule-breaking detective, and Lydia is a by-the-book, genius detective, and they place a bet to see who can get more arrests in a year_ (for .com)**

 **Thanks to Rachel (writergirl8 here, rongasm on tumblr) for, once again, her amazing beta reader work on this!**

* * *

As if Stiles doesn't know it was Allison's doing.

He likes her, really, he does; she is kind and sarcastic, which is always a winning combination for Stiles. She is also dating his best friend, so it doesn't hurt that they get along well.

But damn that vixen woman, really.

She is supposed to be transferred to the 97 for her promotion as a sergeant. Scott is exatic, and Stiles, while feeling slightly guilty, is secretly pleased he doesn't get to witness their sickening morning cuteness at Scott's desk in front of Stiles' own anymore; Allison is cunning and uselessly cruel.

Maybe she thought she was being nice, but Stiles begs to differ. He knows that there is no way Lydia Martin, detective extraordinaire and certified genius, had agreed on her own volition to take over Allison on her shared case with Stiles.

(Seriously, _what_ had Allison used for blackmail? She has always been incredibly skilled in the art of convincing. One day he's going to have to ask her to teach him her ways.)

So now Stiles finds himself placing piles and piles of files on Detective Martin's desk, under her slightly superior gaze.

She isn't going to get up to help him, oh no. She's Lydia Martin, and Stiles is sure that the way she sees it, she is doing him an immense favor, by sparing him her intelligence and logic on the case.

Problem is, he thinks so too.

 _Damn Argent_ , Stiles thinks again, flailing helplessly as the last two files crash to the floor, spreading gruesome photos of ravaged apartment interiors. Okay, so maybe his Earth-sized crush on Lydia isn't kept that secret in precinct (Stiles blames Scott). But did Allison have to blackmail her best friend and play matchmaker?

"So," Lydia says primly as he crouches to pick up the last papers littering the floor beside her desk. "Any reasons why the fourth break-in is even in this file? I mean, it was clearly staged."

Stiles hits his head on her lamp in his haste to get up and defend his own ass from the precinct's most cutting detective. She is looking at him with one eyebrow raised, a picture hanging delicately between the second and third fingers of her right hand.

Stiles grunts externally and, to Scott's future exasperation, swoons internally.

He doesn't even give her two days before solving the case.

This is going to be a long night.

* * *

It's the man from the cleaning company, and Stiles _totally_ called it.

"It's always the man from the cleaning company," he protests to Lydia's closed face as they make their way back to their desks after they cracked the culprit open like a skull under impact.

(Ew, what?)

"And that, of course, is a perfectly sound argument to put someone in jail," she says (dare he hear it?) rather good-amusedly. "Here in the NYPD, we believe in something called evidence, Stilinski. I'm not sure you've heard of it."

"Tsch. I'm the master of evidence. Wasn't I the one who pointed out the common point to all of the break-ins?"

"You said you'd never seen such clean carpets and wondered what company worked like that. I'm appalled that you actually researched them."

"You're just impressed that I solved the case," he says, even though he doesn't dare to believe any of it.

"You're the one who didn't solve it until I came along."

Well. That's true (partly). Stiles blames Allison. That doesn't mean he can't be offended, though.

"So now, it's all thanks to you, uh?"

"I like to think that I contributed to this case more efficiently than you did, yes."

They're standing a feet apart now, foreheads wrinkled in mock-anger (well, Stiles hopes so).

"Oh yeah?" he challenges again. "Are you saying you're a better detective than me?"

"Than I am," she corrects automatically, and Stiles refrains from making a dumb joke that would truly piss her off—Detective Martin takes her grammar very seriously.

"And how about we find out?" she proposes next, and he nearly misses it, engrossed in his own fantasies of bantering with her.

"Find out? How, do you want to determine it over, like, an epic game of Clue? My place, tonight? I can provide the alcohol," he wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.

He can almost see a smile before she represses it.

"I have never played Clue in my life."

"What? But then what on hell made you choose to be a cop?"

"Are you saying a game decided your entire career choice? Did you ever grow up?"

"Would you stop answering my questions with questions?"

She huffs.

"You're doing it too," she points out, and then she sidesteps to head over her desk.

But Stiles isn't backing down now. It's the longest and friendliest conversation they've had in the last eight years.

And yes, Stiles _does_ realize how sad it sounds.

"So what did you have in mind?" he calls after her as she sits at her desk.

"What?"

He begins to sit on the corner of the table but a simple glance from her makes him jump to his feet again. Instead, he crosses his arms and tries a smirk, hoping he doesn't come across as too desperate. One look at Scott, shaking his head in his coffee from his seat in the lounge fifteen feet behind Lydia, destroys this fantasy.

"You said you had a way to find out which one of us is the best detective. So. I'm listening; what did your great, genius brain of yours come up with?"

For a moment, a strange look crosses Lydia's face, and from the way her eyes flash, Stiles feels like he's crossed a barrier he wasn't supposed to know was there.

"A bet," she finally says curtly.

"A bet?"

Despite her mood, he can't help to perk up. _That_ 's the kind of language that Stiles understands, okay? He has a _way_ with bets and dares; he spent his whole childhood daring and getting dared and getting in trouble because he was dared. Detective Lydia Martin doesn't know what she's getting into.

"Deal," he says immediately. "Let's see how many arrests each of us can make before…" He grabs the little desktop calendar sitting next to her second pencil holder—and seriously who has that many pencils? He owns a single ballpoint and still looks like a functioning adult—and glances through it. "February 7th," he says, settling on a close enough date.

It leaves them six months to best each other and themselves. Stiles figures six months is enough to develop an intellectual, competitive relationship between Lydia and himself. It's their thing now, Stiles realize with glee as they shake hands, and Scott still shakes his head in the background like a life-size meme.

Their little inside joke, you could say, even though it's bigger than that, because it involves work, and work is all they both have (well, Lydia may actually have a life on her side, if her Facebook pictures are any indication. What does he know?).

Lydia meets his handshake with her own firm grip, and the way her lips curl up thrills Stiles. She must think she's going to trample him, and maybe she will, but at least she considers him competition enough, and Stiles will take what he can.

* * *

They realize they didn't discuss their prizes the next day, so they do it first thing in the morning, in front of everyone. Stiles takes his bets seriously, and apparently, so does Lydia.

Maybe _he_ is the one who doesn't know what he's getting into, Stiles thinks briefly as the whole squad meets up in the briefing room.

Even Hale, their stuck-up, brooding captain, makes a flash appearance in the room. Luckily, he only steps in to mutter to Scott's ear before rolling his eyes at them and retreating to his office—where, apparently, he both works and sleeps; Stiles once walked in on him doing push-ups at three in morning. He still hasn't figured who was the most embarrassed of the two of them.

"So!" Scott declares loudly, shushing his co-workers' chattering. He holds the marker in the air as a sign of authority. "I am now declaring the great bet of 2011 on and running!"

There is a general cheer as Lydia and Stiles make their ways to the front of the room, in front of the whiteboard where Scott traced a table.

"Detectives," Scott continues gravely, "what are your terms?"

Stiles opens his mouth and closes it, thinking. He knows what he'd like as his prize, but he also knows that blackmailing Lydia into going on a date with him not only is a complete jackass move, but also bound to ruin the semblance of friendship they can—no, they _will_ —develop in the next few months.

So he shrugs and lets Lydia speak, as usual. For once, she, too, seems at loss for words.

"A date!" someone shouts from the back of the room, and when everyone steps aside to let Allison pass, Stiles seriously wonder why he was ever surprised, even for the shortest moment.

"What?" he still says along everyone else, because seriously, Scott is dating a _maniac_.

"The winner takes the loser on a date," she explains, and Stiles can _feel_ all the eyes turn to him. "And has complete control on how the evening goes."

Stiles is still too baffled to articulate anything except for a muted "whaaat—?", but Lydia is already rising, towering down on her friend with all of her five feet three.

"I don't see how that benefits _me_ ," she says.

"Oh God," Stiles mutters, pinching his nose. "Is this real? Can I disappear yet?"

He thinks he can hear Isaac mockingly mutter "Way to go, Stilinski!" three feet away, and decides to focus on Scott's empathic pat on his shoulder instead.

Not bothered by the commotion she's just created (" _Allison?_ " Kira has the sense to exclaim. " _Aren't you supposed to be at work?_ "), Allison smirks and leans down to whisper something in her friend's ear. Lydia's face doesn't move, but she lets out a dramatic sigh and rolls her eyes.

"I agree to those terms!" she calls finally. "It's a date, Stilinski."

Then she turns on her heels and Stiles is left spluttering in front of a whiteboard where their names are written next to each other for the first time.

* * *

The next six months, as much as Stiles wants to play it cool, are bliss. The competition seems to have sparked something in Lydia, and somewhere along the bet they become friends.

The fact that Make Stiles and Lydia Happen 2k11 seems to have become Scott and Allison's national game surely helps too. Stiles can't count the number of times they've gone out all four of them and the two lovebirds have discretely escaped through the back door.

Literally.

"Here," Stiles finds himself saying one day, handing Lydia her coffee (a cafe borgia with 84% dark chocolate syrup, if you please). "You sure you don't want to skate?"

The crowd at Rockefeller Center Ice Rink just before Christmas is something to be reckoned with, and they're inevitably separated by a gaggle of noisy tourists. Their laughs drown Lydia's first answer, but he doesn't need to hear it to know it hasn't changed from the last six times she's been asked.

(Normally he wouldn't push so much, but he's seen the way she looks and scoffs at the people trying their luck on the ice. It's the same looks Stiles used to throw to the Star Wars panel everytíme Scott and he went to rent a movie, back when they were teens.)

"No," she says patiently, considering the circumstances. "I don't really feel like it."

Stiles sighs and burrows his hands in his pockets. There's a reason he agreed to go buy Lydia's drink—paper cups may give the drink a cardboard taste he isn't fond of, but damn are they useful hand warmers.

'I can't," she explains again, gesturing to the cup. "I have coffee now. You can't ice skate while holding coffee."

"You were the one who insisted that I go and buy it for you!"

"Hey, now, that's slander. I gave you the money. You proposed to go yourself. Don't distort the truth."

"The truth is you don't want to go skating because you're afraid to admit that you like it," Stiles mutters in his scarf, but Lydia ignores him—if she hears him at all.

"Look, there they are!" she says suddenly, pointing to Scott and Allison who glide less than elegantly on the ice.

"Scott never was the best skater," Stiles muses extra loud for Lydia's sake. "But I know he tries it for Allison. And he doesn't care what other people think about him."

"Yeah, that's cute."

She waves once at their friends, then makes a complicated gesture during which Stiles nearly loses an eye. Allison seems to understand, though, since she nods before turning to Scott, who had decided to take off on his own and then nearly smacked in someone. Next thing he knows, Stiles is torn from his spot laughing his ass off at his best friend and dragged forcefully away from the rink.

"Come with me," Lydia says, not releasing her grip on the front of his coat. "We need to buy—"

Stiles nearly trips over her when she stops abruptly.

"Wait."

"Wait what?"

"Shhh!"

She guides him over a line of people waiting for their candied chestnuts.

"At three o'clock, near the skinny Santa Claus," she whispers. "Tell me you see him too."

"Peter Hale," Stiles swears. "The Alpha. Peter fucking Hale. How we meet again."

Peter Hale, sometimes nicknamed the Alpha for an unknown reason (Stiles likes to think it's because of the size of his ego), is Scott and Stiles' (and thus the squad's) most wanted perp. They have evidence that he is at the head of several animal traffics and a large dog fights betting system; Scott has recently dug out enough proof to link him back to drugs too, and personally Stiles knows he's somewhat connected to the murder of an arsonist that's already a few weeks old.

He's bad news, sneaky as a snake and also shares a surname, but thankfully no blood ties, with their Captain, which Stiles finds particularly hilarious.

"I gotta call Scott," Stiles says as he feverishly pats his pockets for his phone.

There is no way he's letting that man walk free one more day.

"No!" Lydia exclaims as Peter Hale's broad back moves down the street, further away. "There's no time, Stiles! We have to go, come on."

"Okay."

She darts around the crowd, her fingers around his wrists, and for a moment it looks like their roles are being reversed: Lydia is not that spontaneous, usually. Stiles feels out of place, apart from the constant part where he's dutifully following her lead, as always.

And he's pretty sure the warm feeling in his chest doesn't come from the way her hips move under her green jacket.

(Well, not _only_.)

"Come on, move, people," he hears Lydia says through gritted teeth. He understand the struggle: being in the NYPD has the perk of often clearing the street when they're chasing down a perp.

Often.

Today, they can't use it, because alerting Peter Hale that they're following him would be the _last_ sensible thing to do. At least if they want to have a chance to catch the guy; he's worse than a fish out of water, trashing and slipping through fingers and nets. Stiles remembers that Allison once told him how coyotes walked in total silence and left no traces; when he sees Peter Hale, the first thing that comes to his mind is Allison's eye roll as she told him that _yes, coyotes tiptoe_.

"Do you think he saw us?" Lydia asks a few moments later, as they watch him turn in a side street.

"Nah," Stiles answers with more assurance than he feels. "He can't have, not in this crowd."

A few moments later, he has to take back his words.

"An animal clinic?" Lydia wonders out loud. They stop on the other side of the street, pretending to look at a lingerie shop.

"Yep, he's seen us. And he's taunting us."

"Oh. Well, at least he has a sense of humour?"

How great is it, Stiles thinks darkly, that Lydia has never met Peter Hale and can still control her nerves at the mention of his name. He bets it's about to change.

"I'd rather the guy was as friendly as a prison door, if it meant he could rot inside one for all eternity."

Luckily, they know both their jobs and the neighborhood, and they arrive at the back of the building just in time to see Peter disappear around the corner.

"Cut his road from this side," Stiles says as he starts behind the perp and Lydia immediately sprints in the alley.

He doesn't know exactly how Peter heard him over the car starting at the red light and all the honking, but the moment Stiles rushed towards him, he started to full-out sprint faster than anyone Stiles has ever seen.

Maybe he has super senses and over-developed abilities. Maybe he's a super villain. Or a vampire. Or a werewolf.

Or maybe Stiles should concentrate on avoiding this woman and her king-sized stroller. Well. _That_ 's gonna bruise later.

His mood immediately perks up as he sees Peter turning left, right into Lydia's waiting baton.

 _Gotcha_ , he thinks as he rounds up the corner a second later; but far from seeing Hale laying on the floor clutching his knee under Lydia's ferocious smile, he stumbles onto what he _didn't_ want to see: Hale avoiding Lydia's hit, shoving her aside and tripping his way down the street.

"Fuck!" he swears out loud as he forces his legs to cooperate with him for the few meters that separate them.

Surprisingly, they do.

Both men let out a quite high-pitched squeal as Stiles lunges on top of him and slams him down. They fight for a moment, because neither of them is ready to back down.

Confession time: Stiles may not be the greatest fighter of the squad. And by "may", obviously, he means _is_.

Hale seems to have gathered that perhaps a bit too quickly, and by the way the fight turns around, Stiles knows he won't last long.

Luckily for the world, Lydia Martin is a woman of many resources.

Neither of them see her coming, but Hale surely _feels_ her smacking him on the back of the head, considering the way he crumbles on the floor.

"How heavy is this guy, seriously?" Stiles groans as he tries to push the perp from over him.

Lydia doesn't answer him: she's too busy handcuffing Hale.

"Will you do the honors?" she finally asks him, pulling the man up.

"Gladly. Peter Hale, you're under arrest—"

As Stiles recites him his rights, he sees a police cruiser pull up just at the entrance of the alley.

"We saw you two take off!" Scott exclaims as he opens the back door. "Then we saw who you were running after and we called reinforcements."

His eyes hold the same gleeful spark as Stiles' certainly do, and he knows his best friend is as excited as him to have caught the man.

"So, who wins this one?" Allison asks as the cruiser speeds away.

Stiles and Lydia exchange a glance.

"Well, Lydia was the one who saw and handcuffed him. So I guess it's one more for you."

That makes her three arrests above him, but he knows he can catch up to her without problem.

Well, probably.

But, for some reason, she isn't having any of it.

"Come on, Stilinski. This one's yours. It was your perp, and you caught him after I missed."

He wants to argue in her favor because Lydia Martin doesn't let anyone best her, ever; she's the smartest and most efficient detective in the squad, and they all know it. The bet is just a pretext to spend time with her; _he_ knows that, Scott and Allison, under their gentle pushes and knowing smiles, know that; hell, even Derek Hale knows that.

So what's she playing at? Stiles wonders as the silent settles upon the group. Is she even playing? The look on her face as she looks up at him is more honest than it has ever been.

For the first time, Stiles dares to hope.

"How about one point for each of us?" he finally says, breaking the eye contact that threatens to do things to his mental state.

Lydia's voice is devoid of all fight as she says "okay", but afterwards, when they're looking for a cab and joking about Lydia knocking Hale unconscious with her purse, he can swear her eyes linger longer on his face; she seems curious and, in the way she phrases her answers, maybe happy to be so.

* * *

It's a good thing the bet ends before Valentine's day, Stiles thinks, because otherwise, and as much as he doesn't believe in the holiday, he might do something stupid.

Like take Detective Tate up on her offer to go drown his despair of being Lydia-less at the local celtic bar, The Nemeton.

He knows how that would end, and as great as her legs are, Malia is no Lydia.

And he wants Lydia.

He'd entertained hopes after Peter Hale's arrest, but by the time February rolls around, he's lying in bed with a nasty bout of flu and a fever that makes him dream of glowing flies in a way no one should ever dream of.

And Lydia's still being Lydia, and she's winning.

He knows it's not all effortless, because the evening of the day she takes the lead again by arresting her college ex for involuntary manslaughter, she doesn't look too upbeat as she knocks at his door.

Nevertheless, Stiles is glad she's knocking at _his_ door, and he even manages to make her laugh with his ridiculous TV problems.

They've grown even closer, to the point that she's the one who brings him home after he collapses at work, bright yellow spots dancing in front of his eyes. She holds his hand when he's getting into bed.

But then she leaves when he tells her to, and Stiles has never cursed his treacherous mouth more. He feels like he's been playing a complicated game of speaking his mind and withholding truths that are too revealing for months now, so really, it's no wonder his brain doesn't know which option to choose.

When Scott barges in after work with his mother's chicken soup, Stiles takes back everything he's ever said against his best friend. More importantly, he dutifully swallows his medicine, so that when he walks into work on Monday morning, he can pretend that he's only bringing Lydia coffee to appease her teasing mood. Not because he loves her. Not because he wants to spend his life burning his fingers on too thin paper cups, as long as he's rewarded by the thought that it's for her.

He's losing fast, and he knows it's not only about the bet anymore. Not when she smiles at him with her eyes and her lips, and when she sits behind him at briefings so that she can muss his hair, and not when she calls him first when she finds a murder case because she knows staged break-ins bore him quickly.

When he gets out of the elevator, the shrill bell sound is drowned by a loud chanting. Everybody in the squad is standing around the elevators and holding their watches.

"Ten, nine, eight," they chorus as Stiles drags his prep across the floor that lies between the elevators and the barrier. "Seven, six, five, four…"

At that point he can hear Lydia's heels clatter against the tiles behind him, and Daehler's protests be damned, he'll take him to his desk before end of the countdown. They're tied, so if he can cash the stalker before she drags hers in, then he'll _win_.

He's not sure how to process this yet.

He crashes against the gate, pushes Daehler in and basically throws him in Kira's waiting arms as the the squad exclaims "one".

They erupt in cheers.

"Yes!" He can't help to throw his arms in the air, feeling victorious. "Oh God, I can't believe this... Hey!"

He's sure Lydia shoves him out of the way on purpose as she angrily manhandles her own perp towards the detention cell.

"Thanks for nothing, Aiden," he hears her mutter as she slams the door.

"But it was you who—"

"I don't want to hear it. God. Can men get even _more_ obnoxious?"

"Amen to that!" Malia calls from the other side of the room.

But she throws Stiles a wink at the same time, and mouths _Nemeton, tonight_ clearly enough that Stiles knows she's mocking him. He rolls his eyes and refrains the urge to fling his rubber band ball at her because he just won The Bet against Lydia Martin and also he's an adult.

Sometimes.

He _won_. The bet ended and he's the one who came on top. It feels amazing and foreign, because for six months straight he's been so sure that Lydia was going to be the one who did it.

Now he gets—he gets to take Lydia on date. A date she didn't really agree to. Because she was so sure she was going to win anyway.

 _God_ , why did she choose today of all days to wear heels?

Now it's all fucked up.

* * *

He tries to tell Scott that as they prepare him at his apartment. Stiles is nervous—he's been that way all day, and hasn't been able to look at Lydia in the eyes either for eight hours straight.

Scott doesn't look concerned, though.

"Are you sure she's that mad with the issue of the bet? I mean, she was there and agreed to it."

Stiles shakes his head and takes off the vest he's shrugged on randomly.

"Why did you let me get into this?" he asks one more time.

Scott sighs.

"Dude, I think you're being way too dramatic about this. I'm telling you, this is going to be awkward at worst. You'll be surprised."

"I'm talking about the vest," Stiles mutters as he comes back to his dresser. "Fuck this thing, I'm going like that."

"In your boxers?"

Stiles lets out a sigh of frustration and falls back on his bed.

"Fuck. the only thing I wanted from this thing was to be closer to her. Now look at us. This sucks."

"You're wallowing in your own fabricated misery," Scott says. "You're a detective, Stiles, and a good one at that. So look at the facts!"

"What facts? I looked at her all day, and the only expression I saw on her face was this weird frozen smile whenever she glanced at me!"

"You saw that smile in the reflexion of your computer. Dude, you didn't even met her eyes all day. But you know what you can use?"

"I"m listening."

"You have your not-listening face on."

"I don't have a not-listening face!"

"Yeah, you do. Your eyebrows scrunch up together and you look straight down… and this isn't the point!"

"What _is_ , then?"

Now they're both standing on opposite corners of the room, arms crossed.

"Okay, sit down; calm down," Scott says. "Think. Why did you win?"

"Because we were tied and I got Daehler in before she got Aiden the pothead in. So? She took the elevator after me."

Here Scott fails to repress a growing grin, and Stiles knows he's onto something.

"Or did she?"

The idea strikes Stiles so suddenly that he just _has_ to jump to his feet and flail around the room. He thinks back to that moment—the countdown, the elevators behind him, Lydia's heels on the floor…

"Are you saying she took the stairs to… let me win?"

Scott holds up his hands in the universal sign of "don't involve me I'm just planting the seed in your brain and I deny any responsibility if this turns out to be a mess." Its familiarity is surprisingly comforting.

"Why don't you go out on that date and find out?"

Stiles grabs the first clean pants he can put his hands on and snatches up his black jacket as he crosses the hallway in three strides.

"I'm gonna do better than that," he calls over his shoulder. "Slam the door on your way out!"

* * *

He rings her bell a half an hour early.

"Oh for the love of God…," he can hear behind the door. "No, Prada, stay inside!"

He's confused for a moment until the door cracks open and a small ball of long white hairs rushes at his shoes.

"Err, hello dog. And Lydia. Hi Lydia, hi. Good evening."

She's only dressed in a plush purple bathrobe and she's just standing there, cocking an eyebrow at him.

"So… is Prada your dog?"

"No, it's my designer handbag. Yes," she adds at his incredulous stare. "It's my dog."

"Cool, cool. Err, can I, well, come inside for a sec?"

"I suppose you can."

"You're not going to make the can vs may joke, are you?"

She sighs, and steps back to let him pass. Prada trots happily behind him, and Stiles may accidentally hit her under the head when she walks too close to his heels.

He hopes Lydia isn't _too_ attached to this dog.

"Come in. You're awfully early, I hope you're aware that. You're going to wait until I'm ready anyways, just so you know."

"I'm… I'm not here for the date," Stiles manages to say as he takes in her living-room— purple-ish and full of so much Lydia that it feels nearly choking at this moment.

He can see heels kicked off by the door, and the shelves full of stacks of physics and literature and biology and Ancient Greek books, just messy enough that Stiles knows they've been read often.

"You're not here for the date half an hour before the date," she repeats. "Okay, why not. Then shoot, I guess."

He has to search for the bout of bravery that seized him earlier that evening, but seeing Lydia perfectly at ease in her bathrobe, gesturing at him to join her on the couch, he manages to find his words again.

"Lydia, I don't want to go on a date with you," he blurts out.

In the icy silence that follows, Lydia suddenly stops patting the couch, and Stiles knows he's messed up when he sees her lips get impossibly thin. She rises, showing him the universal sign that his presence is no longer wanted.

"Then I really wonder what you're doing here," she states coldly.

He barely has time to register that Lydia Martin looks downright pissed off that he cancelled some dumb date—one that she had to be talked into by her best friend, nonetheless—before he starts over.

"Wait, Lydia, no, that's not what I meant," he exclaims desperately, since she's already opening the door and mockingly gesturing for him to walk out.

Surprisingly, it works; he sees her shoulder lose some of their tension under the plush fabric of the bathrobe and it nearly seems as if she hesitates before closing the door and turning to him. The heat in her glare doesn't disappear, however, and when she stands in front of him, so that they're practically nose-to-nose, her arms are crossed tight against her chest.

"I'm listening."

"When I started the bet," he scrambles, feeling like he's going to speak the most important words of his relatively short life, "I just wanted to… to hang out with you. Spend some time with you that would just be ours. Because… well, I know it's no surprise, really, but I've had a crush on you since the Academy."

The little breathy laugh she lets out then confirms it, but he doesn't mind because his crush on her isn't and never was something to be ashamed of. She's Lydia Martin and everyone ought to have a crush on her for that exact reason, although Stiles is glad they don't, because then that means he's the only one who fully savors her complexity.

Hey, he never said he wasn't selfish.

"And I guess I just don't like this whole prize thing," he adds, flailing a bit as he gets lost in the moment, his words, his feelings, and eventually just _Lydia_ , standing in front of him with her hair still partly unbrushed. "I don't know why Allison proposed it, and why ýou agreed, but I don't like it."

"Stiles, you know that I can take responsibility for my actions." Her tone is definitely warmer than before, a mix between exasperation and fondness, and just like that, the fight is over. "Didn't it cross your mind that I said yes because I wanted to?"

He blinks once, twice.

"Err, wanted to? Like…"

"Like _wanted_ to, because… Well, I guess I wanted to spend some time with you too."

He's a bit too stunned to properly answer, so he gestures for her to keep going. She does, rolling her eyes—but she, too, starts to fidget with a loose strand hanging from her collar. And even though her fingers are practically on her chest, her words catch Stiles' attention more.

"I set up the bet because I wanted to know what it'd be like to work with someone who can keep up with me. Challenge me. Push me to do my best."

"Best you?" Stiles says finally, his grin too wide for his face. "Cause, you know, I still came fir—"

"I took the stairs," she says curtly, cutting him off, and Stiles has to laugh because yes, of course she did.

"I know," he says, and when her eyes take a fonder look, Stiles guides her to the couch, where Lydia seems to find it very funny to press her knee very close to his.

"So you let me win. Why'd you let me win?"

"Because I wanted to see if you'd do what you're doing."

"What I'm doing?"

"Setting things straight. Cancelling the date."

"Like… some sort of test?" he asks cautiously, because he feels like he's treading on a very thin, very high, line and the net is noticeably absent.

She hums a reply, and he knows he has to do better than that. On the upside, he can see in the curve of her slight pout that she's back in a more playful mood.

"Lydia," he says carefully, because he's starting to feel that what he's going to say won't fully please her, but he needs to say it. "I really need you to understand that I don't want this to happen because of the bet, or because of whatever Allison said."

"It's not," she says firmly. "Stiles, I… I really need _you_ to understand that."

"So you… like me?"

"Yes, I like you. And yes," she adds with a smile that causes something warm and cozy to nestle in his guts, "I want to go on that date with you."

That's when the part where Stiles begins to smile like a perfect idiot, Lydia grins at him too, and they actually stare at each other for a few moments.

Sometimes you just have to take a few moments to stare in someone else's eyes and feel like your life turned into a cliché movie. And, well, as long as that someone is Lydia, Stiles isn't going to complain.

Lydia is the first to break eye contact, but Stiles doesn't mind because then she takes his hand and squeezes his fingers when she stands up.

"So for this date," she begins, and Stiles has never felt more like a teenager, "how about I get dressed, you wait by playing with Prada, because she's been staring at you for the last ten minutes, and then we head down to that Italian restaurant I got reservations for?"

"You got reservations?" he repeats, squinting at her.

"Mmmm."

She sashays her way to her to her bedroom, and Stiles as suddenly nothing left to do but drop on the floor with the dog, throwing her ball under the furniture. He's still snickering about the way Prada tries to wiggle under the dresser when Lydia comes out, beautiful and classy in a little black dress.

She smiles when he tells her that, and goes as far as kissing his cheek before leading him to the restaurant.

And if, afterwards, he gets to feel exactly how well the dress empathizes her waist, and how soft the silky material at the small of her back is, well, it's nobody else's business, really.

(He still calls Scott when he gets home.)

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! You can find me at youaretoosmart on tumblr, cave_canem on ao3.**


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